Richard Edwin Stearns (born July 5, 1936) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

who, with Juris Hartmanis, received the 1993 ACM

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

"in recognition of their seminal paper which established the foundations for the field of

computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and explores the relationships between these classifications. A computational problem ...

". In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. Stearns graduated with a B.A. in

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

from

Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1866, the main campus is between Northfield and the approximately Carleton ...

in 1958. He then received his Ph.D. in mathematics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1961 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled ''Three person cooperative games without side payments'', under the supervision of Harold W. Kuhn. Stearns is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University at Albany, which is part of the

State University of New York The State University of New York (SUNY ) is a system of Public education, public colleges and universities in the New York (state), State of New York. It is one of the List of largest universities and university networks by enrollment, larges ...

Bibliography

*. A first systematic study of language operations that preserve

regular language In theoretical computer science and formal language theory, a regular language (also called a rational language) is a formal language that can be defined by a regular expression, in the strict sense in theoretical computer science (as opposed to ...

s. * . Contains the time hierarchy theorem, one of the theorems that shaped the field of

. *. Answers a basic question about deterministic pushdown automata: it is decidable whether a given deterministic pushdown automaton accepts a

. *. Introduces LL parsers, which play an important role in

compiler design In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

References

External links

* * * 1936 births American computer scientists 1994 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people Turing Award laureates University at Albany, SUNY faculty People from Caldwell, New Jersey Princeton University alumni {{compu-scientist-stub